EPT Grand Final Begins, Seidel Wins Foxwoods |
| Written by Bishop Whitmore |
| Wednesday, 16 April 2008 |
|
The European Poker Tour Grand Final in Monte Carlo is underway with 842 players competing for a first place prize of just over $3 million dollars. The top 80 players will make the money and be paid from a prize pool of over $13 million dollars. Some of the biggest names in poker are competing in the EPT Grand Final including defending champion Gavin Griffin. Other top name pros are in the event and some started off well including former World Series of Poker champion Joe Hachem. Other top pros that started off strong were Freddy Deeb, Marcel Luske, Antonio Esfandiari and Surinder Sunar. Some other top pros made early exits including Barry Greenstein and Daniel Negreanu. In other poker news, Erik Seidel took home the World Poker Tour Foxwoods Poker Classic by besting a field of 345 other players. Seidel won almost $1 million dollars for the victory. With the win, Seidel now has over $9 million in total lifetime cashes. He has a total of eight WSOP bracelets. It has been a good year for Seidel as he also finished second in the Aussie Millions. When it got to heads-up play at the Foxwoods Classic it only took Seidel one hand to take out second place finisher Robert Richardson. While the heads-up battle was short since Seidel had a huge chip lead, the final table was actually a long one. The final table lasted 229 hands and the three-handed play was very long with Seidel, Richardson and Andrew Barta battling it out. The hand that crushed Barta was when Seidel held pocket jacks versus Barta’s A-Q. Both players got all their chips in and the flop brought a jack and Barta got no help on the turn or river and he was out in third place. Frank Cieri went out in fourth place. Adam Katz went out in fifth place after he was eliminated by Richardson. It was a river card that gave Richardson the victory and put Katz out of the tournament. The surprise was that Ted Forrest finished in 6th place. Many thought that he and Seidel would end up dueling for the title but Forrest ran into the pocket aces of Richardson and his pair of jacks did not improve. Here are the final results for the Foxwoods Classic and the payouts: Erik Seidel - $992,890 |
